A strong strategic partnership between Ukraine and Poland will become a powerful response to the Kremlin's aggressive policy, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said Sunday, speaking in Volyn at the event honoring the memory of Ukrainians, victims of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of 1943-1944, the presidential press service reported.
"Russia is waging war against Ukraine, not only against Ukraine, but also against Poland, against the whole Europe, against the whole world, in order to impose its 'Russian world'. They tried to do this first through the 'Novorossiya' project - Kharkiv People's Republic, Zaporizhia People's Republic, Odesa People's Republic… We joined forces and stopped them. And the Novorossiya project was destroyed by our joint effort, not only by the Armed Forces," Poroshenko noted.
"Today, realizing that a direct offensive is ineffective, other methods of war are manipulating our common past, in particular, driving a wedge between the Polish and Ukrainian peoples," Poroshenko stressed.
Therefore, the head of state is convinced: "Only a lasting strategic partnership between Ukraine and Poland will be the best powerful response to the Kremlin's aggressive policy."
Poroshenko believes that the Ukrainian-Polish dialogue on the painful pages of the past, in the conditions of the ongoing Russian aggression, should be as balanced as possible, and decisions must be well thought out.
"The dramatic Ukrainian-Polish conflict of the 1940s is a very complex issue in our common history, therefore it must be withdrawn from the sphere of politics and passed on to scholars," he said.
